This week Richard Kopf, a senior U.S. district-court judge, announced in this post on his blog, Hercules and the Umpire, that he wouldn’t be writing anything further for the blog, which he began in February 2013. For more about Judge Kopf and his blogging, see this WSJ article and this ABA Journal article. In a comment to his farewell post I said, perhaps rather … Read More
The notion of “design” is all the rage. For example, this article about Stanford’s D.school appeared in the New York Times earlier this week. As regards the legal profession, there’s this ABA Journal article by Paul Lippe on the role of design in legal services. Then there are all the references to “contract design” in academic stuff I’ve been reading. So far, … Read More
I’m both a commentator and a guy who sells stuff. Those two roles sometimes bump up against each other in a way that can look awkward. For one thing, I tell anyone willing to listen that if an organization wants to put its contract process on a rational footing, it should adopt a comprehensive style guide for contract language, but … Read More
I bring you two items of interest regarding recovery of attorneys’ fees. One is this post by Brian Rogers, aka @theContractsGuy. The message? If for purposes of a contract governed by Missouri law you want to recover attorneys’ fees, it’s not enough to say “all costs”—you have to mention attorneys’ fees too, presumably by saying “all costs, including attorneys’ fees.” … Read More
I’ve long been aware of contracts promulgated by FIDIC, an international standards organization for the construction industry. But I’d lost track of whether I’d written anything about FIDIC contracts, so during my recent Abu Dhabi seminar I confidently proclaimed that I had. When one of the participants subsequently pointed out that it appeared that in fact I hadn’t, I knew that I had to … Read More
Via this post on Legal Writing Prof Blog I learned of a recent opinion of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that involved an odd instance of confused enumeration in a contract. The case is Karmely v. Wertheimer (here). It’s discussed in this post on allgov.com. The facts are way too involved for me to get into, but here’s the … Read More
I recently received the following from a reader (I redacted information identifying a law firm): I practiced at big firms for a few years, but after being an in-house counsel at small companies for a decade or so, and being in business, I’ve started my own practice focusing on startups and small companies. I appreciate MCSD and your blog. I … Read More
Last week reader Andy posted here a comment asking for advice regarding unplanned changes to a new apartment. Usually I can’t do much with such comments, as I’m not about to get involved every dispute that comes along. But I thought this comment raised an interesting issue, so here it is: I have a question relating to the word “reasonable”. … Read More
I was interested to learn, via @martinertl, of an article on Slate.com by Jessica Olien (@jessicaolien) entitled Inside the Box: People Actually Don’t Like Creativity (here). I recommend that you read the entire article, but here are some bits that caught my eye and seemed relevant to what I’m trying to do: This is the thing about creativity that is … Read More
A modest suggestion: When you’re dealing with real estate, eliminated demised from your contracts. For purposes of real-estate contracts, demise means “to convey by will or lease.” There’s always a simpler word. The following example is from the contract providing for Jeff Bezos’s acquisition of the Washington Post (discussed in this post): The Seller shall lease to the Purchaser sufficient … Read More
